This multidisciplinary collection probes ways in which emerging and established scholars perceive and theorize decolonization and resistance in their own fields of work, from education to political and social studies, to psychology, medicine, and beyond. In this time of renewed global spiritual awakening, indigenous communities are revisiting ways of knowing and evoking theories of resistance informed by communal theories of solidarity. Using an intersectional lens, chapter authors present or imagine modes of solidarity, resistance, and political action that subvert colonial and neocolonial formations. Placing emphasis on the importance of theorizing the spirit, a discourse that is deeply embedded in our unique cultures and ancestries, this book is able to capture and better understand these moments and processes of spiritual emergence/re-emergence.

Curriculum, Spirituality, and Human Rights towards a Just Public Education examines the integration of spirituality—not religion—into U.S. public education and curriculum. The volume challenges celebratory ‘curricularized’ forms of human rights and frames spirituality as a counter-hegemonic human right. Drawing on autobiography as inquiry, Rogério Venturini unpacks his spiritual struggles—‘from within’—and experiences as a progressive spiritual person and educator. The volume examines the subjectivity and objectivity of spirituality, exploring the lethal social impact triggered by the absence of spirituality at the table of the so-called curriculum conversations. This volume places the struggle for spirituality in our field as a political struggle and challenges the epistimicidal nature of such conversations. Venturini draws on critical, anti-colonial, and decolonial frameworks and argues for an epistemological move towards an itinerant curriculum theory, one that responds to the world’s endless epistemological diversity and difference by assuming a non-derivative non-abyssal approach.

Indigenous and decolonizing perspectives on education have long persisted alongside colonial models of education, yet too often have been subsumed within the fields of multiculturalism, critical race theory, and progressive education. Timely and compelling, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education features research, theory, and dynamic foundational readings for educators and educational researchers who are looking for possibilities beyond the limits of liberal democratic schooling. Featuring original chapters by authors at the forefront of theorizing, practice, research, and activism, this volume helps define and imagine the exciting interstices between Indigenous and decolonizing studies and education. Each chapter forwards Indigenous principles - such as Land as literacy and water as life - that are grounded in place-specific efforts of creating Indigenous universities and schools, community organizing and social movements, trans and Two Spirit practices, refusals of state policies, and land-based and water-based pedagogies.

Drawing on treaties, international law, the work of other Indigenous scholars, and especially personal experiences, Marie Battiste documents the nature of Eurocentric models of education, and their devastating impacts on Indigenous knowledge. Chronicling the negative consequences of forced assimilation, racism inherent to colonial systems of education, and the failure of current educational policies for Aboriginal populations, Battiste proposes a new model of education, arguing the preservation of Aboriginal knowledge is an Aboriginal right. Central to this process is the repositioning of Indigenous humanities, sciences, and languages as vital fields of knowledge, revitalizing a knowledge system which incorporates both Indigenous and Eurocentric thinking.

This book offers new ways of engagement for leaders seeking to connect theory to practice in decolonizing education. In the current climate where xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiments, and other forms of exclusion make up much of the discourse, educational leaders need to seek ways to foreground other forms of knowledge and transfer them into their daily leadership practices. Lopez contributes to other critical leadership approaches while foregrounding a decolonizing approach that unsettles the coloniality manifested in education and school practices. Chapters provide school leaders with examples of ways they can challenge coloniality, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression in schooling that negatively impact some students and their educational outcomes.

This book makes a strong case for the inclusion of Indigenous Elders’ cultural knowledge in the delivery of inclusive education for learners who are members of minority communities. It is relevant to curriculum developers, teachers, policy makers and institutions that engage in the education of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other minority students. This book provides opportunities for exploring the decolonization of educational approaches. It promotes the synthesis of multiple types of knowledge and ways of knowing by making a case for the incorporation of Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous Elders as teachers in learning spaces. The book is of interest to educators, students, and researchers of Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing education. Additionally, it is important for educational policy makers, especially those engaged in looking for strategic solutions to bridging educational disparities and gaps for Indigenous, Black, Latinx and other minority learners.

The authors present a novel way of thinking and a robust foundation for de/colonizing educational relationships in Higher and Teacher Education, illustrated by examples of applications to practice. A hybrid style of writing weaves their own narratives into the text, drawing on their experiences in a range of educational settings.

This book explores how minority-led skateboarding, punk rock, and unschooling communities engage in collective efforts to humanize education and construct kinder social frameworks. Noah Romero examines the roles of informal and community-embedded learning in actualizing transformative education and shows how decolonizing education can take place outside of school settings. Grounded in the author's own experience in minority-led Filipino subcultures, the book introduces a conceptual framework of subcultural learning and decolonizing education centred on the Philippines and its diaspora in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Romero argues that educational paradigms with peace, human rights, multiculturalism, social justice, and decolonization at the centre can extend beyond the classroom, curriculum, and teaching and into communities. By showing how minoritized people are redefining identity and knowledge through embodied community-responsive pedagogies, the book contributes to wider debates on Indigeneity, gender justice, human rights, peace studies, and decolonizing education.

This provocative book is anchored on the insurgent and resurgent spirit of decolonization of the twenty-first century. The author calls upon Africa to turn over a new leaf in the domains of politics, economy, and knowledge as it frees itself from imperial global designs and global coloniality. With a focus on Africa and its Diaspora, the author calls for a radical turning over of a new leaf, predicated on decolonial turn and epistemic freedom. The key themes subjected to decolonial analysis include: (1) decolonization/decoloniality – articulating the meaning and contribution of the decolonial turn; (2) subjectivity/identity – examining the problem of Blackness (identity) as external and internal invention; (3) the Bandung spirit of decolonization as an embodiment of resistance and possibilities, development and self-improvement; (4) development and self-improvement – of African political economy, as entangled in the colonial matrix of power, and the African Renaissance, as weakened by undecolonized political and economic thought; and (5) knowledge – the role of African humanities in the struggle for epistemic freedom. This groundbreaking volume opens the intellectual canvas on the challenges and possibilities of African futures. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Politics and International Relations, Development, Sociology, African Studies, Black Studies, Education, History Postcolonial Studies, and the emerging field of Decolonial Studies.

Treating bodies as more than discursive in social research can feel out of place in academia. As a result, embodiment studies remain on the outside of academic knowledge construction and critical scholarship. However, embodiment scholars suggest that investigations into the profound division created by privileging the mind-intellect over the body-spirit are integral to the project of decolonization. The field of embodiment theorizes bodies as knowledgeable in ways that include but are not solely cognitive. The contributors to this collection suggest developing embodied ways of teaching, learning, and knowing through embodied experiences such as yoga, mindfulness, illness, and trauma. Although the contributors challenge Western educational frameworks from within and beyond academic settings, they also acknowledge and draw attention to the incommensurability between decolonization and aspects of social justice projects in education. By addressing this tension ethically and deliberately, the contributors engage thoughtfully with decolonization and make a substantial, and sometimes unsettling, contribution to critical studies in education.